Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types
    Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types
    Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types
    Ebook991 pages15 hours

    Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types

    By Carl Jung

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    One of the most important of Jung's longer works, and probably the most famous of his books, Psychological Types appeared in German in 1921 after a "fallow period" of eight years during which Jung had published little. He called it "the fruit of nearly twenty years' work in the domain of practical psychology," and in his autobiography he wrote: "This work sprang originally from my need to define the ways in which my outlook differed from Freud's and Adler's. In attempting to answer this question, I came across the problem of types; for it is one's psychological type which from the outset determines and limits a person's judgment. My book, therefore, was an effort to deal with the relationship of the individual to the world, to people and things. It discussed the various aspects of consciousness, the various attitudes the conscious mind might take toward the world, and thus constitutes a psychology of consciousness regarded from what might be called a clinical angle."


    In expounding his system of personality types Jung relied not so much on formal case data as on the countless impressions and experiences derived from the treatment of nervous illnesses, from intercourse with people of all social levels, "friend and foe alike," and from an analysis of his own psychological nature. The book is rich in material drawn from literature, aesthetics, religion, and philosophy. The extended chapters that give general descriptions of the types and definitions of Jung's principal psychological concepts are key documents in analytical psychology.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateMar 1, 2014
    ISBN9781400850860
    Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types
    Author

    Carl Jung

    C.G. Jung was one of the great figures of the 20th century. He radically changed not just the study of psychology (setting up the Jungian school of thought) but the very way in which insanity is treated and perceived in our society.

    Read more from Carl Jung

    Related to Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6

    Titles in the series (20)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Psychology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Synchronicity of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung

      Nov 18, 2020

      By the end of 1930, Austrian-born theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli was at the height of his achievements, yet an absolute emotional wreck. His brilliant contributions to science—such as the famous exclusion principle that would eventually earn hi

      10 min read

    • Article

      Forward Thinkers

      Oct 9, 2023

      by Wolfram Eilenberger (Allen Lane, $65 hb) is out now in ebook and in hardback on October 10. Every era has its defining questions that animate the self and the world, and in the 20th century, such questions of philosophy in the Western world were f

      4 min read

    • Article

      Uwe Johnson: Not This But That

      Oct 17, 2018

      Uwe Johnson: Not This But That
      5 min read

    • Article

      Best Translated Book Awards Spotlight: The Millions Interviews Laura Cesarco Eglin

      Jun 10, 2019

      I’ve been living with these poems for a few years: reading, translating, editing. The editing is difficult because you know it’s the prelude to letting go. The post Best Translated Book Awards Spotlight: The Millions Interviews Laura Cesarco Eglin ap

      4 min read

    • Article

      Thought Experimenters

      Sep 1, 2023

      We tend to think of philosophers as solitary creatures. Whether it be Diogenes or Socrates, Spinoza or Rousseau, Thoreau or Nietzsche, the philosopher is by necessity a loner. Several recent books, however, remind us that philosophers can also travel

      4 min read

    • Article

      Left Behind

      Apr 18, 2022

      There exists a strand of social thought, stretching from Georg Hegel in the 19th century through to Max Weber in the early 20th and Jürgen Habermas in the postwar era, that insists a hallmark of modernity is the differentiation of forms of human know

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 259

      Jun 5, 2023

      The Art of Fiction No. 259
      32 min read

    • Article

      Book Briefs

      Feb 6, 2018

      Should Vajrayana practitioners eat meat? Tibetans have long wrestled with this question, as Geoffrey Barstow elucidates in FOOD OF SINFUL DEMONS: MEAT, VEGETARIANISM, AND THE LIMITS OF BUDDHISM IN TIBET (Columbia 2017). In their discussions of ethica

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Bright and Shiny Soul of Geoffrey Brennan (1944–2022)

      May 12, 2023

      Almost a decade ago, Geoff Brennan and I published a remembrance and analysis of the work of Nobelist James M. Buchanan: (“The Soul of James Buchanan?,” Brennan and Munger 2014). Buchanan’s rule had always been, as we noted, that “titles should be fe

      8 min read

    • Article

      Pop Goes German Philosophy

      Aug 1, 2017

      With their TED Talks, TV shows, and runaway best-sellers, a new generation of celebrity philosophers has made German philosophy more popular than ever. But are they ruining it in the process?

      11 min read

    • Article

      At Home With Freud

      Jul 16, 2023

      At Home With Freud
      2 min read

    • Article

      Bookish

      Jul 16, 2019

      These two star-studded tomes are worthy additions to your fall reading list. The Writer’s Reader: Vocation, Preparation, Creation Edited by Robert Cohen and Jay Parini Flannery O’Connor. Julia Alvarez. Zadie Smith. Jorge Luis Borges. Italo Calvino. D

      2 min read

    • Article

      Necrolog

      Aug 12, 2021

      Marie-Jeanne Koffmann spent four decades in the mountains and forests of the former USSR in search of the Russian wild man known as the almasty. Born in Paris, she spent most of her life in Russia. She obtained an MD at Moscow University in 1941 and

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Gentlemanly Love of Liberty

      May 3, 2018

      We learn on its first page that this book had its origin in a conversation in England between its Portuguese author as a young man and the Austrian-born British subject Karl Popper, a professor of political philosophy at the London School of Economic

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Translation

      Jan 30, 2020

      At 91, Lin Wusun is a staunch advocate of somersaults, that is, mental somersaults, his name for the act of translating. An eminent communicator who spent his career explaining Chinese culture to foreigners and the Western way of thinking to Chinese,

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6

    4/5

    6 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Jung's Psychological Types is an important book for those wishing to understand the different types of personality, ways of thinking, and ways of perceiving the world, that various people have. It is all to easy to view the world only as you would naturally view it yourself, and be completely unaware that other people have fundamentally different ways of thinking, hard wired into them, that are not a result of education, intellectual capacity, or cultural influence. Jung finds and presents evidence for the existence of these types in the great writers of the past, showing that they are essentially common across the globe, and also not merely suitable to describe the facets of the contemporary psyche. Again, I was surprised at the the incisiveness of Jung's observations, and his scientific outlook, which have forced me to take Psychological study seriously, something I was ill inclined earlier to do. This book will help you understand your own not-so-peculiarities better, as well as those of those around you. Well worth reading out of interest, and invaluable I would imagine if you were actually a student of psychology.

    Book preview

    Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6 - Carl Jung

    Cover: The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Complete Digital Edition: Psychological Types, Volume 6 by C. G. Jung. Edited and Translated by Gerhard Adler & R. F. C. Hull. Logo: Princeton University Press

    page i →Bollingen Series XX

    The Collected Works

    of

    C. G. Jung

    Volume 6

    Editors

    † Sir Herbert Read

    Michael Fordham, M.D., M.R.C.P.

    Gerhard Adler, PH.D.

    William Mcguire, executive editorpage ii →

    page iii →

    Psychological

    Types

    C. G. JUNG

    A Revision by R. F. C. Hull

    Of the Translation by H. G. Baynes

    Bollingen Series XX

    Princeton University Press

    page iv →Copyright © 1971 by Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.

    Second printing, 1974

    First PRINCETON/BOLLINGEN PAPERBACK printing, with corrections, 1976

    This Edition is Being Published in the United States of America By Princeton University Press and in England by Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd. In the American Edition, all the Volumes Comprising the Collected Works Constitute Number XX in Bollingen Series. The Present Volume is Number 6 of the Collected Works and was the Sixteenth to Appear.

    Except for the appendix, originally published in German as Psychologische Typen, Rascher Verlag, Zurich, 1921. Including appendix, published as volume 6 in the Gesammelte Werke, Rascher Verlag, Zurich, 1960; 2nd edition, 1967. The H. G. Baynes translation of Psychological Types was published in 1923 by Kegan Paul, London, and Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York.

    ISBN 0-691-01813-8 (paperback edn.)

    ISBN 0-691-09770-4 (hardcover edn.)

    eISBN 9781400850860

    Version 2

    Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 75-156

    page v →

    Editorial Note

    Jung was engaged in the preparatory work for Psychological Types during his so-called fallow period, from 1913 to 1917 or 1918, a time of intense preoccupation with the images of his own unconscious, which he describes in the sixth and seventh chapters of Memories, Dreams, Reflections. As he wrote: This work sprang originally from my need to define the ways in which my outlook differed from Freud’s and Adler’s. In attempting to answer this question, I came across the problem of types; for it is one’s psychological type which from the outset determines and limits a person’s judgment. My book, therefore, was an effort to deal with the relationship of the individual to the world, to people and things. It discussed the various aspects of consciousness, the various attitudes the conscious mind might take toward the world, and thus constitutes a psychology of consciousness regarded from what might be called a clinical angle.

    Psychologische Typen was published by Rascher Verlag, of Zurich, in 1921. It was translated into English by H. G. Baynes (1882–1943), who during 1919–22 was Jung’s assistant in Zurich and subsequently became one of the most prominent British analytical psychologists. His translation, subtitled The Psychology of Individuation, was published in 1923 by Kegan Paul in London and Harcourt, Brace in New York. Some 22,000 copies of the Baynes version were sold. Translations have also appeared in Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish,* and Swedish.

    By 1950, the Swiss edition had gone through seven reprintings (some 15,000 copies), with little revision. The work was published as Band 6 in the Gesammelte Werke in 1960; for that edition the text was slightly revised, partly with the help of the author, quotations and references were checked and corrected, and a definition of the self, formulated by Professor Jung for the edition, was added. In the original the self had page vi →figured under the concept of the ego. In accordance with the previously announced plan of the Collected Works in English, an appendix was added containing an important preliminary study for the present book, a lecture delivered at the Psychoanalytical Congress in Munich, 1913, entitled A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types, and three other short works on typology (1925, 1928, 1936). A corrected edition of Band 6 appeared in 1967.

    The present volume is one of the last to appear in the Collected Works. Owing to the continued availability of the Baynes translation in Great Britain and the United States, and the fact that Jung never subjected this work to revision (other than in minor details), the Editors have given precedence to issuing other volumes of which translations were lacking or inadequate.

    The Gesammelte Werke version, in its second, corrected edition, is the basis of the present translation. The paragraph numbering of the Swiss and English editions differs, chiefly because it is the policy of the Collected Works to print quotations in smaller type and not number them as paragraphs. Furthermore, some of the very long paragraphs in the Swiss text have been broken up. For the convenience of readers who wish to compare passages in the two editions, a table of comparative paragraph numbers is given in the back of this volume.

    The numbers of the Definitions fail to correspond among the various editions, owing to the vagaries of alphabetical order.

    When quoted translations contain modifications, the indication Cf. is given in the pertinent footnote. Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote as follows: to Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., for Lawrence Grant White’s translation of the Divine Comedy; to Penguin Books Ltd., for Philip Wayne’s translation of Goethe’s Faust; to Oxford University Press, New York, and Faber and Faber, Ltd., for Louis MacNeice’s translation of Faust.

    The Editors wish to acknowledge their gratitude to the late A.S.B. Glover, who contributed research assistance, various translations of Latin quotations, and wide-ranging advice, to this as all the other volumes in the edition.

    page vii →

    Table of Contents

    Editorial Note

    Foreword to the First Swiss Edition

    Forewords to the Seventh and Eighth Swiss Editions

    Foreword to the Argentine Edition

    Introduction

    I. The Problem of Types in the History of Classical and Medieval Thought

    1. PSYCHOLOGY IN THE CLASSICAL AGE: THE GNOSTICS, TERTULLIAN, ORIGEN

    2. THE THEOLOGICAL DISPUTES OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH

    3. THE PROBLEM OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION

    4. NOMINALISM AND REALISM

    a. The Problem of Universals in Antiquity

    b. The Problem of Universals in Scholasticism

    c. Abelard’s Attempt at Conciliation

    5. THE HOLY COMMUNION CONTROVERSY BETWEEN LUTHER AND ZWINGLI

    II. Schiller’s Ideas on the Type Problem

    1. LETTERS ON THE AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN

    a. The Superior and the Inferior Functions

    b. Concerning the Basic Instincts

    page viii →2. A DISCUSSION ON NAÏVE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY

    a. The Naïve Attitude

    b. The Sentimental Attitude

    c. The Idealist and the Realist

    III. The Apollinian and the Dionysian

    IV. The Type Problem in Human Character

    1. GENERAL REMARKS ON JORDAN’S TYPES

    2. SPECIAL DESCRIPTION AND CRITICISM OF JORDAN’S TYPES

    a. The Introverted Woman

    b. The Extraverted Woman

    c. The Extraverted Man

    d. The Introverted Man

    V. The Type Problem in Poetry

    Carl Spitteler: Prometheus and Epimetheus

    1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON SPITTELER’S TYPOLOGY

    2. A COMPARISON OF SPITTELER’S WITH GOETHE’S PROMETHEUS

    3. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNITING SYMBOL

    a. The Brahmanic Conception of the Problem of Opposites

    b. The Brahmanic Conception of the Uniting Symbol

    c. The Uniting Symbol as the Principle of Dynamic Regulation

    d. The Uniting Symbol in Chinese Philosophy

    4. THE RELATIVITY OF THE SYMBOL

    a. The Worship of Woman and the Worship of the Soul

    b. The Relativity of the God-concept in Meister Eckhart

    page ix →5. THE NATURE OF THE UNITING SYMBOL IN SPITTELER

    VI. The Type Problem in Psychopathology

    VII. The Type Problem in Aesthetics

    VIII. The Type Problem in Modern Philosophy

    1. WILLIAM JAMES’ TYPES

    2. THE CHARACTERISTIC PAIRS OF OPPOSITES IN JAMES’ TYPES

    a. Rationalism versus Empiricism

    b. Intellectualism versus Sensationalism

    c. Idealism versus Materialism

    d. Optimism versus Pessimism

    e. Religiousness versus Irreligiousness

    f. Indeterminism versus Determinism

    g. Monism versus Pluralism

    h. Dogmatism versus Scepticism

    3. GENERAL CRITICISM OF JAMES’ TYPOLOGY

    IX. The Type Problem in Biography

    X. General Description of the Types

    1. INTRODUCTION

    2. THE EXTRAVERTED TYPE

    a. The General Attitude of Consciousness

    b. The Attitude of the Unconscious

    c. The Peculiarities of the Basic Psychological Functions in the Extraverted Attitude

    Thinking

    The Extraverted Thinking Type

    Feeling

    The Extraverted Feeling Type

    Summary of the Extraverted Rational Types

    Sensation

    The Extraverted Sensation Type

    Intuition

    The Extraverted Intuitive Type

    Summary of the Extraverted Irrational Types

    page x →3. THE INTROVERTED TYPE

    a. The General Attitude of Consciousness

    b. The Attitude of the Unconscious

    c. The Peculiarities of the Basic Psychological Functions in the Introverted Attitude

    Thinking

    The Introverted Thinking Type

    Feeling

    The Introverted Feeling Type

    Summary of the Introverted Rational Types

    Sensation

    The Introverted Sensation Type

    Intuition

    The Introverted Intuitive Type

    Summary of the Introverted Irrational Types

    d. The Principal and Auxiliary Functions

    XI. Definitions

    Epilogue

    APPENDIX: FOUR PAPERS ON PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY

    1. A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types (1913)

    2. Psychological Types (1923)

    3. A Psychological Theory of Types (1931)

    4. Psychological Typology (1936)

    TABLE: CORRELATION OF PARAGRAPH NUMBERS

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

    INDEX

    page xi →

    Foreword to the First Swiss Edition

    This book is the fruit of nearly twenty years’ work in the domain of practical psychology. It grew gradually in my thoughts, taking shape from the countless impressions and experiences of a psychiatrist in the treatment of nervous illnesses, from intercourse with men and women of all social levels, from my personal dealings with friend and foe alike, and, finally, from a critique of my own psychological peculiarity.

    It is not my intention to burden the reader with case material; my concern is rather to show how the ideas I have abstracted from my practical work can be linked up, both historically and terminologically, with an existing body of knowledge. I have done this not so much from a need for historical justification as from a desire to bring the experiences of a medical specialist out of their narrow professional setting into a more general context, a context which will enable the educated layman to derive some profit from them. I would never have embarked upon this amplification, which might easily be misunderstood as an encroachment upon other spheres, were I not convinced that the psychological views presented in this book are of wide significance and application, and are therefore better treated in a general frame of reference than left in the form of a specialized scientific hypothesis.

    With this aim in view I have confined myself to examining the ideas of comparatively few workers in this field, and have refrained from mentioning all that has already been said concerning our problem in general. Apart from the fact that even an approximately complete catalogue of the relevant material and opinions would far exceed my powers, such a compilation would not make any fundamental contribution to the discussion and development of the problem. Without regret, therefore, I have omitted much that I have collected in the course of the years, and confined myself as far as possible to essentials. A valuable document that was of very great help to me has page xii →also had to be sacrificed. This is a bulky correspondence which I exchanged with my friend Dr. Hans Schmid¹, of Basel, on the question of types. I owe a great deal of clarification to this interchange of ideas, and much of it, though of course in altered and greatly revised form, has gone into my book. The correspondence belongs essentially to the preparatory stage of the work, and its inclusion would create more confusion than clarity. Nevertheless, I owe it to the labours of my friend to express my thanks to him here.

    C. G. JUNG

    Küsnacht/Zurich

    Spring, 1920

    Foreword to the Seventh Swiss Edition

    This new edition appears unaltered, which is not to say that the book is not in need of further additions, improvements, and supplementary material. In particular, the somewhat terse descriptions of the types could have been expanded. Also, a consideration of works on typology by psychologists since this book first appeared would have been desirable. But the present scope of the book is already so great that it ought not to be augmented unless urgently necessary. Moreover, there is little practical purpose in making the problems of typology still more complicated when not even the elements have been properly understood. Critics commonly fall into the error of assuming that the types were, so to speak, fancy free and were forcibly imposed on the empirical material. In face of this page xiii →assumption I must emphasize that my typology is the result of many years of practical experience—experience that remains completely closed to the academic psychologist. I am first and foremost a doctor and practising psychotherapist, and all my psychological formulations are based on the experiences gained in the hard course of my daily professional work. What I have to say in this book, therefore, has, sentence by sentence, been tested a hundredfold in the practical treatment of the sick and originated with them in the first place. Naturally, these medical experiences are accessible and intelligible only to one who is professionally concerned with the treatment of psychic complications. It is therefore not the fault of the layman if certain of my statements strike him as strange, or if he thinks my typology is the product of idyllically undisturbed hours in the study. I doubt, however, whether this kind of ingenuousness is a qualification for competent criticism.

    September 1937

    C. G. JUNG

    Foreword to the Eighth Swiss Edition

    The new edition again appears unaltered in essentials, but this time many small, long-necessary corrections have been made in the details. Also a new index has been compiled. I am especially indebted to Mrs. Lena Hurwitz-Eisner for this irksome work.

    June 1949

    C. G. JUNG

    page xiv →

    Foreword to the Argentine Edition

    ¹

    No book that makes an essentially new contribution to knowledge enjoys the privilege of being thoroughly understood. Perhaps it is most difficult of all for new psychological insights to make any headway. A psychology that is grounded on experience always touches upon personal and intimate matters and thus arouses everything that is contradictory and unclarified in the human psyche. If one is plunged, as I am for professional reasons, into the chaos of psychological opinions, prejudices, and susceptibilites, one gets a profound and indelible impression of the diversity of individual psychic dispositions, tendencies, and convictions, while on the other hand one increasingly feels the need for some kind of order among the chaotic multiplicity of points of view. This need calls for a critical orientation and for general principles and criteria, not too specific in their formulation, which may serve as points de repère in sorting out the empirical material. What I have attempted in this book is essentially a critical psychology.

    This fundamental tendency in my work has often been overlooked, and far too many readers have succumbed to the error of thinking that Chapter X (General Description of the Types) represents the essential content and purpose of the book, in the sense that it provides a system of classification and a practical guide to a good judgment of human character. Indeed, even in medical circles the opinion has got about that my method of treatment consists in fitting patients into this system and giving them corresponding advice. This regrettable misunderstanding completely ignores the fact that this kind of classification is nothing but a childish parlour game, every bit as futile as the division of mankind into brachycephalics and dolichocephalics. My typology is far rather a critical apparatus serving to sort out and organize the welter of empirical material, but not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight. page xv →It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical. For this reason I have placed the general typology and the Definitions at the end of the book, after having described, in chapters I to IX, the processes in question with the help of various examples. I would therefore recommend the reader who really wants to understand my book to immerse himself first of all in chapters II and V. He will gain more from them than from any typological terminology superficially picked up, since this serves no other purpose than a totally useless desire to stick on labels.

    It is now my pleasant duty to express my sincerest thanks to Madame Victoria Ocampo for her great help in securing the publication of this book, and to Señor Ramón de la Serna for his work of translation.

    Küsnacht/Zurich

    C. G. JUNG

    October 1934page xvi →

    page 1 →

    Psychological Types

    page 2 →Plato and Aristotle! These are not merely two systems, they are types of two distinct human natures, which from time immemorial, under every sort of disguise, stand more or less inimically opposed. The whole medieval world in particular was riven by this conflict, which persists down to the present day, and which forms the most essential content of the history of the Christian Church. Although under other names, it is always of Plato and Aristotle that we speak. Visionary, mystical, Platonic natures disclose Christian ideas and the corresponding symbols from the fathomless depths of their souls. Practical, orderly, Aristotelian natures build out of these ideas and symbols a fixed system, a dogma and a cult. Finally the Church embraces both natures, one of them entrenched in the clergy and the other in monasticism, but both keeping up a constant feud.

    —Heine, Deutschland, I

    page 3 →

    Introduction

    [1]     In my practical medical work with nervous patients I have long been struck by the fact that besides the many individual differences in human psychology there are also typical differences. Two types especially become clear to me; I have termed them the introverted and the extraverted types.

    [2]     When we consider the course of human life, we see how the fate of one individual is determined more by the objects of his interest, while in another it is determined more by his own inner self, by the subject. Since we all swerve rather more towards one side or the other, we naturally tend to understand everything in terms of our own type.

    [3]     I mention this circumstance at once in order to avoid possible misunderstandings. It will be apparent that it is one which considerably aggravates the difficulty of a general description of types. I must presume unduly upon the goodwill of the reader if I may hope to be rightly understood. It would be relatively simple if every reader knew to which category he belonged. But it is often very difficult to find out whether a person belongs to one type or the other, especially in regard to oneself. In respect of one’s own personality one’s judgment is as a rule extraordinarily clouded. This subjective clouding of judgment is particularly common because in every pronounced type there is a special tendency to compensate the one-sidedness of that type, a tendency which is biologically purposive since it strives constantly to maintain the psychic equilibrium. The compensation gives rise to secondary characteristics, or secondary types, which present a picture that is extremely difficult to interpret, so difficult that one is inclined to deny the existence of types altogether and to believe only in individual differences.

    [4]     I must emphasize this difficulty in order to justify certain peculiarities in my presentation. It might seem as if the simplest way would be to describe two concrete cases and to dissect page 4 →them side by side. But everyone possesses both mechanisms, extraversion as well as introversion, and only the relative predominance of one or the other determines the type. Hence, in order to throw the picture into the necessary relief, one would have to retouch it rather vigorously, and this would amount to a more or less pious fraud. Moreover, the psychological reactions of a human being are so complicated that my powers of description would hardly suffice to draw an absolutely correct picture. From sheer necessity, therefore, I must confine myself to a presentation of principles which I have abstracted from a wealth of facts observed in many different individuals. In this there is no question of a deductio a priori, as it might appear; it is rather a deductive presentation of empirically gained insights. These insights will, I hope, help to clarify a dilemma which, not only in analytical psychology but in other branches of science as well, and especially in the personal relations of human beings with one another, has led and still continues to lead to misunderstanding and discord. For they explain how the existence of two distinct types is actually a fact that has long been known: a fact that in one form or another has struck the observer of human nature or dawned upon the brooding reflection of the thinker, presenting itself to Goethe’s intuition, for instance, as the all-embracing principle of systole and diastole. The names and concepts by which the mechanisms of extraversion and introversion have been grasped are extremely varied, and each of them is adapted to the standpoint of the observer in question. But despite the diversity of the formulations the fundamental idea common to them all constantly shines through: in one case an outward movement of interest towards the object, and in the other a movement of interest away from the object to the subject and his own psychological processes. In the first case the object works like a magnet upon the tendencies of the subject; it determines the subject to a large extent and even alienates him from himself. His qualities may become so transformed by assimilation to the object that one might think it possessed some higher and decisive significance for him. It might almost seem as if it were an absolute determinant, a special purpose of life or fate that he should abandon himself wholly to the object. But in the second case the subject is and remains the page 5 →centre of every interest. It looks, one might say, as though all the life-energy were ultimately seeking the subject, and thus continually prevented the object from exercising any overpowering influence. It is as though the energy were flowing away from the object, and the subject were a magnet drawing the object to itself.

    [5]     It is not easy to give a clear and intelligible description of this two-way relationship to the object without running the risk of paradoxical formulations which would create more confusion than clarity. But in general one could say that the introverted standpoint is one which sets the ego and the subjective psychological process above the object and the objective process, or at any rate seeks to hold its ground against the object. This attitude, therefore, gives the subject a higher value than the object, and the object accordingly has a lower value. It is of secondary importance; indeed, sometimes the object represents no more than an outward token of a subjective content, the embodiment of an idea, the idea being the essential thing. If it is the embodiment of a feeling, then again the feeling is the main thing and not the object in its own right. The extraverted standpoint, on the contrary, subordinates the subject to the object, so that the object has the higher value. In this case the subject is of secondary importance, the subjective process appearing at times as no more than a disturbing or superfluous appendage of objective events. It is clear that the psychology resulting from these contrary standpoints must be classed as two totally different orientations. The one sees everything in terms of his own situation, the other in terms of the objective event.

    [6]     These contrary attitudes are in themselves no more than correlative mechanisms: a diastolic going out and seizing of the object, and a systolic concentration and detachment of energy from the object seized. Every human being possesses both mechanisms as an expression of his natural life-rhythm, a rhythm which Goethe, surely not by chance, described physiologically in terms of the heart’s activity. A rhythmical alternation of both forms of psychic activity would perhaps correspond to the normal course of life. But the complicated outer conditions under which we live and the even more complicated conditions of our individual psychic make-up seldom permit page 6 →a completely undisturbed flow of psychic energy. Outer circumstances and inner disposition frequently favour one mechanism and restrict or hinder the other. One mechanism will naturally predominate, and if this condition becomes in any way chronic a type will be produced; that is, an habitual attitude in which one mechanism predominates permanently, although the other can never be completely suppressed since it is an integral part of the psychic economy. Hence there can never be a pure type in the sense that it possesses only one mechanism with the complete atrophy of the other. A typical attitude always means merely the relative predominance of one mechanism.

    [7]     The hypothesis of introversion and extraversion allows us, first of all, to distinguish two large groups of psychological individuals. Yet this grouping is of such a superficial and general nature that it permits no more than this very general distinction. Closer investigation of the individual psychologies that fall into one group or the other will at once show great differences between individuals who nevertheless belong to the same group. If, therefore, we wish to determine wherein lie the differences between individuals belonging to a definite group, we must take a further step. Experience has taught me that in general individuals can be distinguished not only according to the broad distinction between introversion and extraversion, but also according to their basic psychological functions. For in the same measure as outer circumstances and inner disposition cause either introversion or extraversion to predominate, they also favour the predominance of one definite basic function in the individual. I have found from experience that the basic psychological functions, that is, functions which are genuinely as well as essentially different from other functions, prove to be thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. If one of these functions habitually predominates, a corresponding type results. I therefore distinguish a thinking, a feeling, a sensation, and an intuitive type. Each of these types may moreover be either introverted or extraverted, depending on its relation to the object as we have described above. In my preliminary work on psychological types¹ I did not carry out page 7 →this differentiation, but identified the thinking type with the introvert and the feeling type with the extravert. A deeper study of the problem has shown this equation to be untenable. In order to avoid misunderstandings, I would ask the reader to bear in mind the differentiation I have developed here. For the sake of clarity, which is essential in such complicated matters, I have devoted the last chapter of this book to the definition of my psychological concepts.

    page 8 →I

    The Problem of Types in the History of Classical and Medieval Thought

    1. Psychology in the Classical Age:

    The Gnostics, Tertullian, Origen

    [8]     So long as the historical world has existed there has always been psychology, but an objective psychology is only of recent growth. We could say of the science of former times that in proportion to the lack of objective psychology there is an increase in the rate of subjectivity. Hence, though the works of the ancients are full of psychology, only little of it can be described as objective psychology. This may be due in no small measure to the peculiar character of human relationships in classical and medieval times. The ancients had, so to speak, an almost entirely biological valuation of their fellow-men; this is everywhere apparent in their habits of life and in the legislation of antiquity. The medieval man, in so far as his value judgments found any expression at all, had on the contrary a metaphysical valuation of his fellows, and this had its source in the idea of the imperishable value of the human soul. This metaphysical valuation, which may be regarded as compensatory to the standpoint of antiquity, is just as unfavourable as the biological one so far as a personal valuation is concerned, which alone can form the basis of an objective psychology.

    [9]     Although not a few people think that a psychology can be written ex cathedra, nowadays most of us are convinced that an objective psychology must be founded above all on observation and experience. This foundation would be ideal if only it were possible. The ideal and aim of science do not consist in giving the most exact possible description of the facts—science cannot compete as a recording instrument with the camera and the gramophone—but in establishing certain laws, page 9 →which are merely abbreviated expressions for many diverse processes that are yet conceived to be somehow correlated. This aim goes beyond the purely empirical by means of the concept, which, though it may have general and proved validity, will always be a product of the subjective psychological constellation of the investigator. In the making of scientific theories and concepts many personal and accidental factors are involved. There is also a personal equation that is psychological and not merely psychophysical. We see colours but not wave-lengths. This well-known fact must nowhere be taken to heart more seriously than in psychology. The effect of the personal equation begins already in the act of observation. One sees what one can best see oneself. Thus, first and foremost, one sees the mote in one’s brother’s eye. No doubt the mote is there, but the beam sits in one’s own eye—and may considerably hamper the act of seeing. I mistrust the principle of pure observation in so-called objective psychology unless one confines oneself to the eye-pieces of chronoscopes and tachistoscopes and suchlike psychological apparatus. With such methods one also guards against too embarrassing a yield of empirical psychological facts.

    [10]     But the personal equation asserts itself even more in the presentation and communication of one’s own observations, to say nothing of the interpretation and abstract exposition of the empirical material. Nowhere is the basic requirement so indispensable as in psychology that the observer should be adequate to his object, in the sense of being able to see not only subjectively but also objectively. The demand that he should see only objectively is quite out of the question, for it is impossible. We must be satisfied if he does not see too subjectively. That the subjective observation and interpretation accord with the objective facts proves the truth of the interpretation only in so far as the latter makes no pretence to be generally valid, but valid only for that area of the object which is being considered. To this extent it is just the beam in one’s own eye that enables one to detect the mote in one’s brother’s eye. The beam in one’s own eye, as we have said, does not prove that one’s brother has no mote in his. But the impairment of one’s own vision might easily give rise to a general theory that all motes are beams.

    page 10 →[11]     The recognition and taking to heart of the subjective determination of knowledge in general, and of psychological knowledge in particular, are basic conditions for the scientific and impartial evaluation of a psyche different from that of the observing subject. These conditions are fulfilled only when the observer is sufficiently informed about the nature and scope of his own personality. He can, however, be sufficiently informed only when he has in large measure freed himself from the levelling influence of collective opinions and thereby arrived at a clear conception of his own individuality.

    [12]     The further we go back into history, the more we see personality disappearing beneath the wrappings of collectivity. And if we go right back to primitive psychology, we find absolutely no trace of the concept of an individual. Instead of individuality we find only collective relationship or what Lévy-Bruhl calls participation mystique. The collective attitude hinders the recognition and evaluation of a psychology different from the subject’s, because the mind that is collectively oriented is quite incapable of thinking and feeling in any other way than by projection. What we understand by the concept individual is a relatively recent acquisition in the history of the human mind and human culture. It is no wonder, therefore, that the earlier all-powerful collective attitude prevented almost completely an objective psychological evaluation of individual differences, or any scientific objectification of individual psychological processes. It was owing to this very lack of psychological thinking that knowledge became psychologized, i.e., filled with projected psychology. We find striking examples of this in man’s first attempts at a philosophical explanation of the cosmos. The development of individuality, with the consequent psychological differentiation of man, goes hand in hand with the de-psychologizing work of objective science.

    [13]     These reflections may explain why objective psychology has such a meagre source in the material handed down to us from antiquity. The differentiation of the four temperaments, which we took over from the ancients, hardly rates as a psychological typology since the temperaments are scarcely more than psychophysical colourings. But this lack of information does not mean that we can find no trace in classical literature page 11 →of the effects of the psychological pairs of opposites we are discussing.

    [14]     Gnostic philosophy established three types, corresponding perhaps to three of the basic psychological functions: thinking, feeling, and sensation. The pneumatikoi could be correlated with thinking, the psychikoi with feeling, and the hylikoi with sensation. The inferior rating of the psychikoi was in accord with the spirit of Gnosticism, which, unlike Christianity, insisted on the value of knowledge. The Christian principles of love and faith kept knowledge at a distance. In the Christian sphere the pneumatikoi would accordingly get the lower rating, since they were distinguished merely by the possession of Gnosis, i.e., knowledge.

    [15]     Type differences should also be borne in mind when we consider the long and perilous struggle which the Church from its earliest beginnings waged against Gnosticism. Owing to the predominantly practical trend of early Christianity the intellectual hardly came into his own, except when he followed his fighting instincts by indulging in polemical apologetics. The rule of faith was too strict and allowed no freedom of movement. Moreover, it was poor in positive intellectual content. It boasted of few ideas, and though these were of immense practical value they were a definite obstacle to thought. The intellectual was much worse hit by the sacrificium intellectus than the feeling type. It is therefore understandable that the vastly superior intellectual content of Gnosis, which in the light of our present mental development has not lost but has considerably gained in value, must have made the greatest possible appeal to the intellectual within the Church. For him it held out in very truth all the temptations of this world. Docetism in particular caused grave trouble to the Church with its contention that Christ possessed only an apparent body and that his whole earthly existence and passion had been merely a semblance. In this contention the purely intellectual element predominates at the expense of human feeling.

    [16]     Perhaps the struggle with Gnosis is most vividly presented to us in two figures who were of the utmost significance not only as Church Fathers but as personalities. These are Tertullian and Origen, who lived towards the end of the second century. Schultz says of them:

    page 12 →One organism is able to take in nourishment and assimilate it almost completely into its own nature; another with equal persistence eliminates it with every sign of passionate resistance. Thus Origen on one side, and Tertullian on the other, reacted in diametrically opposite ways to Gnosis. Their reaction is not only characteristic of the two personalities and their philosophical outlook; it is of fundamental significance with regard to the position of Gnosis in the spiritual life and religious currents of that age.¹

    [17]     Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about A.D. 160. He was a pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city until about his thirty-fifth year, when he became a Christian. He was the author of numerous writings wherein his character, which is our especial interest, is unmistakably displayed. Most clearly of all we see his unparalleled noble-hearted zeal, his fire, his passionate temperament, and the profundity of his religious understanding. He was a fanatic, brilliantly one-sided in his defence of a recognized truth, possessed of a matchless fighting spirit, a merciless opponent who saw victory only in the total annihilation of his adversary, his language a flashing blade wielded with ferocious mastery. He was the creator of the Church Latin that lasted for more than a thousand years. It was he who coined the terminology of the early Church. Once he had seized upon a point of view, he had to follow it through to its ultimate conclusion as though lashed by the legions of hell, even when right had long since ceased to be on his side and all reasonable order lay in shreds before him.² His impassioned thinking was so inexorable that again and again he alienated himself from the very thing for which he had given his heart’s blood. Accordingly his ethical code was bitterly severe. Martyrdom he commanded to be sought and not shunned; he permitted no second marriage, and required the permanent veiling of persons of the female sex. Gnosis, which in reality is a passion for thinking and knowing, he attacked with unrelenting fanaticism, together with philosophy and science which differed from it so little. To him is ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical fact, for he merely said: And the Son of God page 13 →died, which is immediately credible because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible.³

    [18]     Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it. He invoked against it the testimony of his own inner world, his own inner realities, which were one with his faith. In shaping and developing these realities he became the creator of those abstract conceptions which still underlie the Catholic system of today. The irrational inner reality had for him an essentially dynamic nature; it was his principle, his foundation in face of the world and of all collectively valid and rational science and philosophy. I quote his own words:

    I summon a new witness, or rather a witness more known than any written monument, more debated than any system of life, more published abroad than any promulgation, greater than the whole of man, yea that which constitutes the whole of man. Approach then, O my soul, whether you be something divine and eternal, as many philosophers believe—the less then will you lie—or not wholly divine, because mortal, as Epicurus alone contends—the less then ought you to lie—whether you come from heaven or are born of earth, whether compounded of numbers or of atoms, whether you have your beginning with the body or are later joined to it; what matter indeed whence you come and how you make man to be what he is, a reasonable being, capable of perception and of knowledge. But I summon you not, O soul, as proclaiming wisdom, trained in the schools, conversant with libraries, fed and nourished in the academies and pillared halls of Athens. No, I would speak with you, O soul, as wondrous simple and unlearned, awkward and inexperienced, such as you are for those who possess nothing else but you, even as you come from the alleys, from the street-corners, and from the workshops. It is just your unknowingness that I need.⁴

    [19]     The self-mutilation performed by Tertullian in the sacrificium intellectus led him to an unqualified recognition of the irrational inner reality, the true rock of his faith. The necessity of the religious process which he sensed in himself he crystallized in the incomparable formula anima naturaliter christiana page 14 →(the soul is by nature Christian). With the sacrificium intellectus philosophy and science, and hence also Gnosis, fell to the ground. In the further course of his life the qualities I have described became exacerbated. When the Church was driven to compromise more and more with the masses, he revolted against it and became a follower of the Phrygian prophet Montanus, an ecstatic, who stood for the principle of absolute denial of the world and complete spiritualization. In violent pamphlets he now began to assail the policy of Pope Calixtus I, and this together with his Montanism put him more or less outside the pale of the Church. According to a report of Augustine, he even quarrelled with Montanism later and founded a sect of his own.

    [20]     Tertullian is a classic example of introverted thinking. His very considerable and keenly developed intellect was flanked by an unmistakable sensuality. The psychological process of development which we call specifically Christian led him to the sacrifice, the amputation, of the most valuable function—a mythical idea that is also found in the great and exemplary symbol of the sacrifice of the Son of God. His most valuable organ was the intellect and the clarity of knowledge it made possible. Through the sacrificium intellectus the way of purely intellectual development was closed to him; it forced him to recognize the irrational dynamism of his soul as the foundation of his being. The intellectuality of Gnosis, the specifically rational stamp it gave to the dynamic phenomena of the soul, must have been odious to him, for that was just the way he had to forsake in order to acknowledge the principle of feeling.

    [21]     In Origen we may recognize the absolute opposite of Tertullian. He was born in Alexandria about A.D. 185. His father was a Christian martyr. He himself grew up in that quite unique mental atmosphere where the ideas of East and West mingled. With an intense yearning for knowledge he eagerly absorbed all that was worth knowing, and accepted everything, whether Christian, Jewish, Hellenistic, or Egyptian, that the teeming intellectual world of Alexandria offered him. The pagan philosopher Porphyry, a pupil of Plotinus, said of him: His outward life was that of a Christian and against the law; but in his opinions about material things and the Deity he page 15 →thought like a Greek, and introduced Greek ideas into foreign fables.⁵

    [22]     His self-castration had taken place sometime before A.D. 211; his inner motives for this may be guessed, but historically they are not known to us. Personally he was of great influence, and had a winning speech. He was constantly surrounded by pupils and a whole host of amanuenses who gathered up the precious words that fell from the revered master’s lips. As an author he was extraordinarily prolific and he developed into a great teacher. In Antioch he even delivered lectures on theology to the Emperor’s mother Mammaea. In Caesarea he was the head of a school. His teaching activities were frequently interrupted by his extensive journeyings. He possessed an extraordinary erudition and had an astounding capacity for careful investigation. He hunted up old biblical manuscripts and earned special merit for his textual criticism. He was a great scholar, indeed the only true scholar the early Church possessed, says Harnack. In complete contrast to Tertullian, Origen did not cut himself off from the influence of Gnosticism; on the contrary, he even channelled it, in attenuated form, into the bosom of the Church, or such at least was his aim. Indeed, judging by his thought and fundamental views, he was himself almost a Christian Gnostic. His position in regard to faith and knowledge is described by Harnack in the following psychologically significant words:

    The Bible is equally needful to both: the believers receive from it the facts and commandments they need, while the Gnostics decipher thoughts in it and gather from it the powers which guide them to the contemplation and love of God—whereby all material things, through spiritual interpretation (allegorical exegesis, hermeneutics), seem to be melted into a cosmos of ideas, until at last everything is surmounted and left behind as a stepping-stone, while only this remains: the blessed and abiding relationship of the God-created creaturely soul to God (amor et visio).⁶

    [23]     His theology as distinguished from Tertullian’s was essentially philosophical; it fitted neatly into the framework of Neoplatonic page 16 →philosophy. In Origen the two worlds of Greek philosophy and Gnosis on the one hand, and Christian ideas on the other, interpenetrate in a peaceful and harmonious whole. But this daring, perspicacious tolerance and fair-mindedness led Origen, too, to the fate of condemnation by the Church. Actually the final condemnation took place only posthumously, after Origen as an old man had been tortured in the persecution of the Christians under Decius and had subsequently died from the effects of the torture. Pope Anastasius I pronounced the condemnation in 399, and in 543 his heretical teachings were anathematized at a synod convoked by Justinian, which judgment was upheld by later councils.

    [24]     Origen is a classic example of the extraverted type. His basic orientation was towards the object; this showed itself in his scrupulous regard for objective facts and their conditions, as well as in the formulation of that supreme principle: amor et visio Dei. The Christian process of development encountered in Origen a type whose ultimate foundation was the relation to the object—a relation that has always symbolically expressed itself in sexuality and accounts for the fact that there are certain theories today which reduce all the essential psychic functions to sexuality too. Castration was therefore an adequate expression of the sacrifice of the most valuable function. It is entirely characteristic that Tertullian should perform the sacrificium intellectus, whereas Origen was led to the sacrificium phalli, because the Christian process demands a complete abolition of the sensual tie to the object; in other words, it demands the sacrifice of the hitherto most valued function, the dearest possession, the strongest instinct. Considered biologically, the sacrifice serves the interests of domestication, but psychologically it opens a door for new possibilities of spiritual development through the dissolution of old ties.

    [25]     Tertullian sacrificed the intellect because it bound him most strongly to worldliness. He fought against Gnosis because for him it represented a deviation into intellectuality, which at the same time involved sensuality. In keeping with this fact we find that in reality Gnosticism also was divided into two schools: one school striving after a spirituality that exceeded all bounds, the other losing itself in an ethical anarchism, an page 17 →absolute libertinism that shrank from no lewdness and no depravity however atrocious and perverse. A definite distinction was made between the Encratites, who practised continence, and the Antitactae or Antinomians, who were opposed to law and order, and who in obedience to certain doctrines sinned on principle and purposely gave themselves up to unbridled debauchery. To the latter school belong the Nicolaitans, Archontics, etc., and the aptly named Borborians. How closely the seeming contraries lay side by side is shown by the example of the Archontics, for this same sect was divided into an Encratite and an Antinomian school, both of which pursued their aims logically and consistently. If anyone wants to know what are the ethical consequences of intellectualism pushed to the limit and carried out on a grand scale, let him study the history of Gnostic morals. He will then fully understand the sacrificium intellectus. These people were also consistent in practice and carried their crazy ideas to absurd lengths in their actual lives.

    [26]     Origen, by mutilating himself, sacrificed his sensual tie to the world. For him, evidently, the specific danger was not the intellect but feeling and sensation, which bound him to the object. Through castration he freed himself from the sensuality that was coupled with Gnosticism; he could then surrender without fear to the treasures of Gnostic thought, whereas Tertullian through his sacrifice of the intellect turned away from Gnosis but also reached a depth of religious feeling that we miss in Origen. In one way he was superior to Origen, says Schultz, because in his deepest soul he lived every one of his words; it was not reason that carried him away, like the other, but the heart. Yet in another respect Tertullian stands far behind him, inasmuch as he, the most passionate of all thinkers, was on the verge of rejecting knowledge altogether, for his battle against Gnosis was tantamount to a complete denial of human thought.⁷

    [27]     We see here how, in the Christian process, the original type has actually become reversed: Tertullian, the acute thinker, becomes the man of feeling, while Origen becomes the scholar and loses himself in intellectuality. Logically, of course, page 18 →it is quite easy to put it the other way round and say that Tertullian had always been the man of feeling and Origen the intellectual. Apart from the fact that the difference of type is not thereby done away with but exists as before, the reversal does not explain how it comes that Tertullian saw his most dangerous enemy in the intellect, and Origen in sexuality. One could say they were both deceived, adducing as evidence the fatal outcome of both lives by way of argument. If that were the case, one would have to assume that they both sacrificed the less important thing, and that both of them made a crooked bargain with fate. That is certainly a point of view whose validity should be recognized in principle. Are there not just such slyboots among primitives who approach their fetish with a black hen under the arm, saying; See, here is thy sacrifice, a beautiful black pig. I am, however, of the opinion that the depreciatory method of explanation, notwithstanding the unmistakable relief which the ordinary mortal feels in dragging down something great, is not under all circumstances the correct one, even though it may appear to be very biological. From what we can personally know of these two great figures in the realm of the spirit, we must say that their whole nature was so sincere that their conversion to Christianity was neither an underhand trick nor a fraud, but had both reality and truthfulness.

    [28]     We shall not be digressing if we take this opportunity to try to grasp the psychological meaning of this rupture of the natural course of instinct, which is what the Christian process of sacrifice appears to be. From what has been said it follows that conversion signifies at the same time a transition to another attitude. This also makes it clear from what source the impelling motive for conversion comes, and how far Tertullian was right in conceiving the soul as naturaliter Christiana. The natural course of instinct, like everything in nature, follows the line of least resistance. One man is rather more gifted here, another there; or again, adaptation to the early environment of childhood may demand relatively more reserve and reflection or relatively more empathy and participation, according to the nature of the parents and the circumstances. In this way a certain preferential attitude is built up automatically, resulting in different types. Since every man, as a relatively stable page 19 →being, possesses all the basic psychological functions, it would be a psychological necessity with a view to perfect adaptation that he should also employ them in equal measure. For there must be a reason why there are different modes of psychological adaptation: evidently one alone is not enough, since the object seems to be only partially comprehended when, for example, it is something that is merely thought or merely felt. A one-sided (typical) attitude leaves a deficiency in the adaptive performance which accumulates during the course of life, and sooner or later this will produce a disturbance of adaptation that drives the subject toward some kind of compensation. But the compensation can be obtained only by means of an amputation (sacrifice) of the hitherto one-sided attitude. This results in a temporary accumulation of energy and an overflow into channels not used consciously before though lying ready unconsciously. The adaptive deficiency, which is the causa efficiens of the process of conversion, is subjectively felt as a vague sense of dissatisfaction. Such an atmosphere prevailed at the turning-point of our era. A quite astonishing need of redemption came over mankind, and brought about that unparalleled efflorescence of every sort of possible and impossible cult in ancient Rome. Nor was there any lack of advocates of living life to the full, who operated with arguments based on the science of that day instead of with biological ones. They, too, could never be done with speculations as to why mankind was in such a bad way. Only, the causalism of that epoch, as compared with our science, was considerably less restricted; they could hark back far beyond childhood to cosmogony, and numerous systems were devised proving that what had happened in the remote abyss of time was the source of insufferable consequences for mankind.

    [29]     The sacrifice that Tertullian and Origen carried out was drastic—too drastic for our taste—but it was in keeping with the spirit of the age, which was thoroughly concretistic. Because of this spirit the Gnostics took their visions as absolutely real, or at least as relating directly to reality, and for Tertullian the reality of his feeling was objectively valid. The Gnostics projected their subjective inner perception of the change of attitude into a cosmogonic system and believed in the reality of its psychological figures.

    page 20 →[30]     In my book Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido⁸ I left the whole question open as to the origin of the peculiar course the libido took in the Christian process of development. I spoke of a splitting of libido into two halves, each directed against the other. The explanation of this is to be found in a one-sided psychological attitude so extreme that compensations from the unconscious became an urgent necessity. It is precisely the Gnostic movement in the early centuries of our era that most clearly demonstrates the breakthrough of unconscious contents at the moment of compensation. Christianity itself signified the collapse and sacrifice of the cultural values of antiquity, that is, of the classical attitude. At the present time it is hardly necessary to remark that it is a matter of indifference whether we speak of today or of that age two thousand years ago.

    2. The Theological Disputes of the Ancient Church

    [31]     It is more than probable that the contrast of types will also be found in the history of the schisms and heresies that were so frequent in the disputes of the early Church. The Ebionites or Jewish Christians, who were probably identical with the primitive Christians generally, believed in the exclusive humanity of Christ and held him to be the son of Mary and Joseph, only subsequently receiving his consecration through the Holy Ghost. On this point the Ebionites were diametrically opposed to the Docetists. The effects of this opposition endured long after. The conflict came to light again in an altered form—which, though doctrinally attenuated, had an even graver effect on Church politics—about the year 320 in the Arian heresy. Arius denied the formula propounded by the orthodox Church: τῶ Πατρὶ ὁμοούσιος (of one substance with the Father), in favour of τῶ Πατρὶ ὁμοούσιος (of like substance with the Father). When we examine more clearly the history of the great Arian controversy concerning homoousia and homoiousia (the complete identity as against the similarity of Christ’s substance with God), it seems to us that homoiousia definitely puts the accent on the sensuous and page 21 →humanly perceptible, in contrast to the purely conceptual and abstract standpoint of homoousia. In the same way it would appear to us that the revolt of the Monophysites (who upheld the absolute unity of Christ’s nature) against the Dyophysite formula of the Council of Chalcedon (which upheld the inseparable duality of Christ, his human and divine nature coexisting in one body) once more asserted the standpoint of the abstract and inconceivable as against the sensuous and naturalistic formula of the Dyophysites.

    [32]     At the same time it becomes overwhelmingly clear to us that, in the Arian movement as in the Monophysite dispute, although the subtle dogmatic question was the main issue for the minds that originally conceived it, this was not so for the great mass of people who took part in the controversy. Even in those early days so subtle a question had no motivating force with the masses, who were stirred rather by the problems and claims of political power that had nothing to do with differences of theological opinion. If type differences had any significance at all here, it was merely because they provided catchwords that gave a flattering label to the crude instincts of the mass. But this should in no way blind us to the fact that, for those who kindled the quarrel, homoousia and homoiousia were a very serious matter. For concealed within it, both historically and psychologically, lay the Ebionite creed of a purely human Christ with only relative (apparent) divinity, and the Docetist creed of a purely divine Christ with only apparent corporeality. And beneath this level in turn lies the great psychological schism. The one position attaches supreme value and importance to the sensuously perceptible, whose subject, though it may not always be human and personal, is nevertheless always a projected human sensation; the other maintains that the chief value lies with the abstract and extra-human, whose subject is the function; in other words, with the objective process of nature, that runs its course determined by impersonal law, beyond human sensation, of which it is the actual foundation. The former standpoint overlooks the function in favour of the function-complex, if man may be so regarded; the latter overlooks man as the indispensable subject in favour of the function. Each standpoint denies the principal value of the other. The more resolutely the adherents of either standpoint page 22 →identify themselves with it, the more they strive, with the best intentions perhaps, to force it on the other, and thereby violate the other’s supreme value.

    [33]     Another aspect of the type conflict appears in the Pelagian controversy at the beginning of the fifth century. The experience so profoundly felt by Tertullian, that man cannot avoid sin even after baptism, grew with Augustine—who in many ways was not unlike Tertullian—into that thoroughly characteristic, pessimistic doctrine of original sin, whose essence consists in the concupiscence⁹ inherited from Adam. Over against the fact of original sin there stood, according to Augustine, the redeeming grace of God, with the institution of the Church ordained by his grace to administer the means of salvation. In this scheme of things the value of man stands very low. He is really nothing but a miserable rejected creature, who is delivered over to the devil under all circumstances, unless through the medium of the Church, the sole means of salvation, he is made a participator of the divine grace. Not only man’s value, but his moral freedom and his self-determination crumbled away accordingly, with the result that the value and significance of the Church as an idea were so much the more enhanced, as was altogether in keeping with Augustine’s explicit programme in the Civitas Dei.

    [34]     Against such a stifling conception there rises ever anew the feeling of man’s freedom and moral value—a feeling that will not long endure suppression whether by insight however searching, or logic however keen. The rightness of the feeling of human value found its defenders in Pelagius, a British monk, and Celestius, his pupil. Their teaching was founded on the moral freedom of man as a given fact. It is characteristic of the psychological kinship existing between the Pelagian standpoint and the Dyophysite view that the persecuted Pelagians found an advocate in Nestorius, the Metropolitan of Constantinople. Nestorius stressed the separation of the two natures of Christ in contrast to the Cyrillian doctrine of the ϕνσικὴ ἔνωσυϛ, physical oneness of Christ as the God-man. Also, Nestorius definitely did not want Mary to be understood as the Θεοτόκος (God-bearer), but merely as the Χριστοτόκος (Christ-bearer). page 23 →With some justification he even called the idea that Mary was the mother of God heathenish. From

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1